TRENTON — Mayor Tony Mack on Friday vetoed a City Council ordinance that would have cut the mayor’s six-figure annual salary by 52.5 percent.

“I am rejecting Ordinance 12-30 because it is an unconstitutional violation of my due process rights and it violates the Faulkner Act requirements on the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of city government,” Mack said in his veto statement issued Friday.

“We had all the right to do that,” South Ward Councilman George Muschal said on Friday on council’s passage of the salary-reduction ordinance. Muschal said City Council President Phyllis Holly-Ward checked with the state Department of Community Affairs and reviewed the Faulkner Act with lawyers to vouch for the council’s authority to adjust the mayor’s monetary compensation.

Council on Thursday night narrowly passed Ordinance 12-30 in a 4-3 vote to reduce the mayor’s annual salary from $126,400 to $60,000. Mack didn’t wait long to exercise his veto power.

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“The mayor shall, within 10 days after receiving the ordinance, Sundays excepted, either approve the ordinance by affixing his signature thereto or return it to the council by delivering it to the clerk together with a statement setting forth his objections thereto or any item or part thereof,” according to state law 40A:61-4 that regulates the powers of the mayor.

“No ordinance or any item or part thereof shall take effect without the mayor’s approval, unless the mayor fails to return the ordinance to the council, as prescribed above, or unless the council, upon consideration of the ordinance following its return, shall, by a vote of two-thirds of all the members of council, resolve to override the veto.”

City Council needs five votes to override the veto. A failure to override the veto would result in Mack retaining his six-figure salary.

Mack, who has a recent history of personal financial troubles, in a recent council meeting said he loves his job so much that he’d “work for free.”

Holly-Ward mentioned Mack’s “work for free” quote at Thursday’s council meeting. When a member of the public suggested Mack wants to work for money, Holly-Ward said Mack shouldn’t be lying in council chambers when he speaks there.

In addition to the veto, Mack on Friday also issued a statement saying: “Considering the fact that so many of our residents are still without power, suffered property damage, and had to discard food for lack of power, I find it utterly despicable that certain members of City Council would choose to play politics during such a trying time for our community. We are still addressing the ravaging effects of Hurricane Sandy and my administration remains focused on returning normalcy to our city.”

Councilmembers Muschal, Holly-Ward, Zachary Chester and Marge Caldwell-Wilson voted to pass the pay-reduction ordinance. The three members who voted against it were Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, Kathy McBride and Alex Bethea.

Reynolds-Jackson last month supported the salary-reduction ordinance on first reading, but when the measure came up for final adoption on second-reading, she voted against the measure, saying the language of the ordinance wasn’t strong enough for her liking.

The ordinance to reduce Mack’s salary says “City Council finds that it is in the public interest that the compensation of the office of Mayor be adjusted and fixed at an amount commensurate with the current economic circumstances of the City of Trenton.”

Federal officials arrested Mack Sept. 10 on charges he conspired with others to extort $119,000 from a Hudson County developer. The mayor, who is free on $150,000 unsecured bail, has been under federal investigation since September 2010 and earlier this year had his home and City Hall office raided by the FBI. City residents fed up with Mack’s leadership last year tried, but failed, to have Mack recalled from office.